Archives For the wall street journal

In short, the public debate about how Congress ought to respond to this latest mass shooting is guided by two broad principles. Dubious on their own, they are even more witless when combined. The first is the idea that the most important thing is to “do something.” The second is that we ought to look to high-schoolers for the answer.

For this advocacy — and that’s what it is — Hogg has been feted as a key leader within a “mass movement” that is determined to reform America; he has been praised for his attempt to “force change”; he has been cast, including by himself, as a lion who refuses to back down; and, in some of the more cunning quarters of the left, he has been turned into a walking demonstration of the need to lower the voting age. At no point has anyone hosting him suggested that his relevance is limited to his capacity to describe his experience; rather, he has in every instance been asked to join a public political fight — a fight, remember, that relates to nothing less foundational than the American Bill of Rights.

The deadly school shooting this month in Parkland, Florida, has ignited national outrage and calls for action on gun reform. But while certain policies may help decrease gun violence in general, it’s unlikely that any of them will prevent mass school shootings, according to James Alan Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern.

What’s failing, exactly? I wonder if, like intel agencies pre-9/11, mass shooting threats are lumped in to a vastly broader pool, responsibility spread across many agencies federal and local, so no single force is in charge, dedicated to spotting them. Dedicated local task forces like the ones described here strike me as having a great deal of potential. We should be thinking and talking about them more.

There is, to my knowledge, no dedicated national law enforcement + criminologist group specifically looking for potential infamy shooters, for institutional holes that might impede finding them, or trying to educate local officials on warning signs. This may also offer a way to think more clearly about security reforms and the like — Not arming teachers or lightly trained, bored rent-a-cops, but increasing both random and occasionally intel-based patrols by trained police who are specifically there to deter shooters.

More relevant is the principle that large mobs are more dangerous than small mobs, and likely to harbor more psychopaths. Apparently running out of Nazis to resist, Boston protesters threw rocks and urine-filled bottles at police. Any shortage of white supremacists can always be corrected by expanding the definition. Opponents of a $15 minimum wage are racist. Skeptics about a pending climate crisis are racist. Anyone questioning the utility of pulling down old statues is racist.

Universities have consistently underestimated the power of a furious public. At the same time, they’ve overestimated the power of student activists, who have only as much influence as administrators give them. Far from avoiding controversy, administrators who respond to campus radicals with cowardice and capitulation should expect to pay a steep price for years.

Great op-ed on the destruction of the personal beliefs and feelings at the hands of far left minions. It appears those on the far left have replaced faith in a higher being with their own post-modern illiberal religion which can’t consist of those who value free thinking. Little do they know that these continuing infringements on peoples consciences could have dire effects in the future when the inevitable backlash hits. The fact that a pretty liberal individual who happens to have a belief in God was consistently hounded by the left and press while other candidates were not having their faith questioned is appalling. I hope Mr. Farron is able to find some peace now that he is no longer in the crucible of 21st century post modern politics.